Day 5: No Shades of Grey An Alias24? Crossover
by DavidB226Morris
Summary: It's Fourteen Months since Day 4. Jack, Sydney et al were cashiered out of the government and have rebuilt their lives in New York. But as they try to finish what they think will be a routine bust with the NYPD, they will find that some jobs it is impossible to escape from. A new day is dawning...
1. 7:00 AM-8:00 AM

Day 5: No Shades of Gray

**An 24-Alias-* Crossover**

***Only those who read will find out what else**

**by DavidB226Morris**

**Summary: It's Fourteen Months since Day 4. Jack, Sydney et al were cashiered out of the government and have rebuilt their lives in New York. But as they try to finish what they think will be a routine bust with the NYPD, they will find that some jobs it is impossible to escape from. A new day is dawning...**

**Disclaimer: Jack Bauer, his daughter Kim and the rest of the team at CTU belong to Joel Surnow and all the staff at Real Time Productions. Sydney Bristow, Nadia Santos and any other characters from Alias who pop up are the property of J.J. Abrams and all the geniuses who worked on Alias. There will be other characters from other shows popping up; I'll disclaim them when the time comes.**

**Argument: Welcome back, ye few but faithful. For those of you who are following this, most of the characters from Day 4 will be present. I will also be adding some characters from both universes who Jack and Syd haven't run into yet. You'll know them when you see them. One exception. David Palmer has been forced to resign from office due to the events of the last hour of Day 4. For those constitutional scholars out there, that means we have a new government running the country. However, they won't be playing as big a role in this particular day. So far, anyway.**

**And for those of you keeping track:**

**Jack is 45. Sydney is 37. Vaughn is 38. Nadia, around 35. Kim, about 21.**

_I don't think I've said this often enough, so I'll be blunt. New Chapters will be posted in direct proportion to how many reviews they receive. I know I have readers. Prove it._

_Enough of my jawing. Let's start the clock._

**Chapter 1**

**THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN 7:00 A.M. AND 8:00 A.M.**

**CROWN HEIGHTS SECTION OF HARLEM**

Sydney Bristow had seen some pretty disturbing things in her years working counter-intelligence for the government, and after all the horrors that had come raining down on the country, and, to an extent, on her and her family, she had been pretty sure she had inured herself to just about all of the cruelties that the world could possibly revealed. For that matter, considering what had happened on the day that had led to them breaking all ties with the government, she was now pretty sure that there was nothing in this solar system could shock her. Hell, she had crashed a goddamn flying saucer, while her brother-in-law had been injected with an alien entity. Given the extremes that particular day had shown them, she hadn't fought as hard as she could have to keep her position. Anything else would have to be met with a blasé attitude.

She kept trying to convince herself of that while maintaining the perimeter, but despite herself, her vision kept coming back to the subject of their particular investigation.

_That's right,_ her inner voice- the one that she'd pretty much managed to suppress while she was working with the Agency- kept telling her._ Keep calling him a subject. That should keep you from thinking that the person whose life is about to come crashing down upon him hasn't even gotten out of junior high._

When the security company that they had founded had opened less than ten months ago, Vaughn had assured her that they would be handling less of the heavy work. Madeline was about to go into nursery school, and though he hadn't mentioned it, Jack and Nadia were thinking about children, now that for the first time in their lives the pressure was off. There was a reason none of them had put up as huge a fight as they could've to keep their government jobs- there was twice as much money to be made in the private sector and a quarter of the risk. Even the fact that the NYPD made up a third of their business had not been a drawback - narcotics and robberies weren't thrilling, but they more than made up for it by not having to handle labyrinthine conspiracies.

Then Commissioner Reagan had given them something that had been giving Narco a problem for the last two years. Low-level drug lord Marlowe Bell had been running up a substantial body count in the one-five, and every time they had a case, witnesses or suspects would either disappear or recant at trial. With the city budget half shot to shit, Deputy Commissioner Reagan had thought that this particular job called for the kind of work that Sydney and Jack had been capable of. And in a purely financial way, the Bell investigation had been a success story.

Three days of their surveillance combined with the gadgetry that only Marshall Flinkman was capable of had led them to a discarded cell network. By using a series of back-traces, in one week they had managed to identify nine major players in Bell's gang. One of those players had been a suspected soldier named Puck. Two days of surveillance had revealed that he had been one of the biggest enforcers, as well as where twenty bodies had been kept in a series of abandoned housing projects.

The problem had been finding a way to make all of this stand up in court. Bell hadn't been free this long just because he was scum; he also happened to know exquisitely good attorneys, who would have no trouble getting this excluded. It had taken the ADA three days to find a way to make this admissible, and another week to set up a bust that would start the dominoes that would lead to Bell spending the rest of his life at Attica.

It was the subject of that bust that had Syd's conscience coming out of hibernation - a fourteen-year old with the unlikely street name of Snot Boogie. It wasn't the fact that this kid, real name Kenny Williams, had been a ward of the state since he was a toddler or that he'd been in and out of juvie practically since he could walk. No, it was the eyes that Sydney kept coming back to every time she looked at him.

They were the eyes of rebel soldiers in Sarajevo; of dissidents in China, and they had no business being on a face of someone who looked like he should still be playing with his Wii on Saturday mornings.

"You keep staring at him, he's going to know something's up," Syd's husband said to her.

"We're a hundred yards away behind a dumpster," Syd pointed out. "If he can do that, he'd be hanging out with Charles Xavier instead of Bell."

"You've spent too much time with Marshall recently," Vaughn recognized how half hearted her attempt at banter had been. He moved a couple of feet closer to his wife. "How many sales have we seen Williams make the last week?" he pointed out. "Twenty? Twenty-five? This kid isn't an angel no matter how young he looks."

"In less than five minutes, this kid is going to be in NYPD custody charged with narcotics possession," Syd replied. "Third bust, which means he'll be spending the rest of his life behind bars. And you know what bastards like Bell think when guys like this go in. This kid'll get iced for the cost of a pack of cigarettes."

Vaughn had known about his wife's unease with this for the last few days. He knew that ever since they had left the Company, a lot of her inner toughness had been fading away. For the most part, he considered this good - Syd's compassion had been one of the things that he had fallen in love with her for. But if they were going to keep doing work with the NYPD, they were going to be facing a lot of jobs like this, with an unreasonably high number of similar cases.

_A vacation might not be the worst idea, _he thought to himself. _Maybe down to the Caribbean... then again, with our luck, we would probably be attacked by pirates._

He was about to make this suggestion to Syd, when there was a beep in his ear. "Guys, blue SUV about a block away," Marshall told them. "License plate and make says it belongs to Freddie Mack.'

Frederick McKenna had been identified as one of the suppliers to half a dozen major gangs, including Bell's. It had taken a fair amount of effort on the parts of their surveillance to figure out this much, as well as coordinating a wiretap to learn that this particular time and place would be when a new 'package' was going to be delivered.

"All right, everybody, radio silence, this is what we've been waiting for," Lieutenant Goldblume sent out over their radios, under a scrambled wire. "Our bug is in position. Let's make this clean."

**7:07:13/7:07:14/7:07:15**

It seemed like a scene out of a poorly crafted PSA- a small group of kids were gathering around a strange vehicle, disregarding everything they'd ever been told about taking gifts from strangers. Of course this bunch probably never saw those kinds of announcement, and, if they did, probably would've argued that all the kids in those ads were white, so what did they know?

One thing a month of surveillance had taught everybody that Bell had a level of paranoia that your average sleeper cell would envy. Everybody was a possible cop; didn't matter what race, sex or age you were. So the two-block stretch that this particular resupply was taking place on was absent of any possible cops. The meeting was being recorded by a series of spyware that Marshall and Edgar had spent the last week configuring to look like it was nothing more than ordinary refuse. The only person that anybody didn't seen was a dirty, middle-aged, disheveled homeless man with a sign that said: 'GULF WAR SYNDROME: PLEASE HELP ME.' Jack Bauer had spent the last week at this position, with a devotion to character that a lot of actors would have found impressive.

Once upon a time Sydney would've thought Jack playing a war vet and a burnout would have been typecasting.

"All right, boys, time to get healthy," Using the high powered binoculars Sydney could tell even from a hundred yards away that McKenna was handing out Ziploc baggies filled with heroin. "Hurry up, gotta get to those boys with their back to school money."

Seeing this made Sydney feel a little less guilty about throwing Kenny Williams to the sharks. Only a little less.

The bug that was in the tin can of pork and beans that Jack was pretending to eat from was picking all this up, but any half-ass public defender, much less the bloodsuckers Bell employed, would be able to get this part tossed. What they were waiting for was McKenna to finish his errand and do what he did the three other times they had seen this happened.

It took another two minutes for this little drug give and take to get finished. When it did, Freddie Mack took out his cell, and made his call.

"Chloe, it's about to happen," Sydney whispered. "Tell me the bug is going through."

"Saying it is isn't going to get this guy in jail any faster." Chloe had been as snappish about this at Sydney had been, but then by now this was what they've expected. 'Besides, this is the NYPD's play, not mine."

Sydney decided she would be better served by staying silent, even though it was taking all her restraint to keep from pulling her gun and shooting out this asshole's tires. It was a moot point, because a few seconds later, they heard the call go through on their wire.

"Kids got their milk and cookies, my man," Freddie Mack's told them.

"All right, come in and get your allowance." Pause. "Oh yeah, that other thing we talked about. Take care of it."

"Now what the fuck are they talking about?" Vaughn asked.

"You can ask him yourself," Goldblume told them. "We got what we need. Set up the road block."

The SUV drove off, officially becoming the police's problem. Jack, Sydney and the rest were essentially there to follow through on the next part - helping gather up all the little birds before they tried to fly away.

_Just keep reminding yourself that this kid slings poison for a living _Sydney told herself as she began to move closer to where the youthful offenders were beginning to move away.

A young twenty-ish blonde made her way towards the fourteen year old black kid. "I need a dime-bag." she asked in a strung-out voice.

Snot Boogie looked at her with utter disdain. "Trust fund check come in today, bitch?"

"Don't be this way," their plant replied, taking out a wad of bills.

Another disdainful laugh. "She-it. How do I know you're not a cop?"

It would've been laughable under other circumstances. "When was I recruited? Middle school?" Another long pause, in which their subject was trembling. "Trust me. I'm not a goddamn cop!"

The irony was, she was actually telling the truth here.

Snot Boogie still looked skeptical, but like all dealers, he had to worry about his profit margin more than anyone else. He reached into his pocket and measure out a little more than a gram. "Special Paris Hilton discount," he said giving her exactly what she asked for.

All of this was SOP. At that moment, however, Snot Boogie's cell began ringing. He seemed to be getting some kind of text message, but before their techs could sweep in and intercept it, he turned his phone off. Everybody on the ground froze.

Snot Boogie then reached down into his pocket- and pulled out a .38 police special. Until that moment, none of them had even suspected that he had been carrying. Looking at it, it seemed to be bigger than him.

"Hey, pretty girl," Everybody froze at that, even Jack Bauer. There was no panic or fear in the blonde's eyes but there was a very good reason for that.

But the kid didn't point the gun at her. Instead, he lifted it above his head, seeming to make sure that he had a clear field. Then he fired. Once.

Kim Bauer had no intention of giving this kid a chance to rethink his decision. She whirled around, and delivered a perfect Krav Maga kick right at Snot Boogie's groin. Never had the sight of textbook martial-artistry been so welcome.

The police all stampeded the site - none of them had a chance of reaching Snot Boogie before Jack did.

"You know, I'd think that by now you'd have a little more trust in my aunt's self-defense classes," Kim didn't seem even a little shaken by how close she seemed to have come to death.

This actually rated a smile from Jack. "At the risk of sounding like Danny Glover, I may be getting to old for this shit."

"Does that make me Rene Russo in that scenario?" Kim asked.

"Enough with the movie trivia, everybody," Goldblume brought them all back to the present. "Help us pick up the youthful offenders and let's finish up what we came here for."

"Still feeling sorry for that kid?" Vaughn asked his wife, as they moved in to finish up their part of the gig.

"Ask me again in half an hour," Sydney replied.

In retrospect, she should've known far better than to put a time limit on a thing like this.

**7:16:39/7:16:40/7:16:41/7:16:42**

**Double B Security Offices**

"What do you mean, you don't have the text?" Chloe demanded. "The tech you created supposedly can hear a gnat buzz at fifty yards."

Marshall was going to be glad when this particular assignment was over. He was in tech design and Chloe was in field work, so in theory, never the twain should have met. But ever since the assignment had started, Chloe had been more on edge than usual, snapping at him what seemed to be every few minutes. Edgar had played peacemaker so many times, he was beginning to consider applying to the U.N. "If they ever rebuild from where they crashed the UFO."

"Both Syd and Jack told me they would only need audio-tech for this mission," Marshall told them. "You should know. You were in the same meetings."

"I know you, Marshall. Sometimes I really wish I didn't, but I do." Chloe replied. "You put in more extras on your devices than you get with a Blu-Ray. Please don't tell me you didn't prepare for just this occasion."

_Do either of them know that this is a compliment? _Edgar thought. Instead, he looked at Marshall. "Do you have one or not?" he asked gently.

"Normally, yes, but, um, since the NYPD has on a much smaller retainer than the last government contract," Marshall finally answered. "We couldn't afford to include one. Sorry."

Edgar thought that this was over now. Then the same idea crossed his mind that was currently crossing Chloe's. "Where's the back door?" he asked.

Marshall considered this. "If you were to stand in the exact location that Williams was when he received the text, I think I could use a GPS tracker to find it on our feed."

Chloe had the expression that made her look like she wanted to throttle the tech. This was why they operated on separate floors for most of their work. "Run the video feed, and get ready to send it to my PDA," she told him. "I'm going to take a run down to Brooklyn."

"Shouldn't you clear that with Jack or Sydney?" Edgar asked. "I mean, they're there."

"They're going to be busy filing the papers that get us paid," Chloe countered. "Right now, loose ends are the last thing they want to deal with."

Edgar could've pointed out that half the reason that this company had been formed was to deal with the 'loose ends' that came when all those crises they'd spent years averting finished up. But, looking at Chloe's face, he could tell the last thing she wanted to hear was a repeat of Double B's mission statement.

"Try to stay clear of the Bloods," he told her instead. "And take your weapon," he added, knowing full well what a lousy shot she was.

Chloe considered reminding Edgar that they'd just made a major dent in one of the biggest gangs in the city, and that usually the bullets wouldn't start flying until the gangstas had finished their morning coffee. But having worked at CTU longer than anybody else in the room, she knew better than most how quickly a situation could boomerang.

So she walked over to her desk, took out her weapon, checked the clip and holstered it. "Start mainlining the rest of the data," she told them. "NYPD's going to want it the second that they walk in the door."

FIFTEENTH PRECINCT

**7:21:45/7:21:46/7:21:47**

Even though they had prepared for the breadth of the haul they were making, the precinct was filled with low-level pushers, many of whom weren't old enough to vote. Sydney knew that these 'boys' were responsible for enough felonies and misdemeanors, and, in the case of three of the dealers, at least four open homicides. Still, the disconnect between what she saw and what we knew was enough to give her pause.

Jack could see that his sister-in-law was rapidly going into a brown study. "Still wish you were dealing with Sloane?" he asked, trying to jolly her out of it.

Syd shook her head. "Thinking about my father, actually," she told them. "Dad would be a little surprised that he had to search so far and wide to develop a new stream of wunderkind spies. He would've done better to drive down here, and start promising heroin. Line would start outside."

"Being a criminal isn't the same thing as doing what we do," Jack said slowly.

"Really?" Syd raised an eyebrow. "I believe we all forfeited our pension because people in high places thought otherwise."

Syd was clearly in a prickly mood. Jack the government agent would have told her to stow her emotions, and remind her one of those boys had threatened his daughter not ten minutes ago. Jack the father was having his own problems dealing with the same issue. The big difference was, he had always been better **at compartmentalizing. So he just turned** to Syd, and said: "Let's just file the paperwork, so we can get paid. Besides, you would never have survived having to guard movie stars."

Sydney nodded, and started to walk towards the back of the squad.

Josh Goldblume the lieutenant who they'd been reporting to on this assignment, was finishing a couple of congratulatory phone calls when Jack and Sydney approached his office. "Look, we have to make sure all the i's are dotted, so I'll get back to you. Thank you, Don." He hung up. "Typical politicians. Their congratulations always go to guy who had the least to do with the bust."

"Technically speaking, that's not true," Jack reminded him. "You did hire us."

"Bureaucratically speaking, that's not true," the lieutenant reminded them. "As the DA has made more than clear, your particular work on this case can't be made official. Bell's asshole lawyers will get the charges tossed otherwise."

"Hey, I can live without taking a bow, as long as the city pays us," Sydney told them.

"Your final payment is being cleared as we speak," Goldblume told them. "I gotta tell you, seeing that number, I'm tempted to ask if you'd hire me to work for you."

Sydney and Jack smiled, knowing that this wasn't a remark being made entirely in jest. For some reason, the Commissioner had been more willing to pay money for a private security firm than to hire more cops to handle just this kind of work. It was bureaucratic bullshit like that made them glad they were no **longer on the government payroll.**

"Just for fun, how long will it be before the charges get filed?" It sounded like a casual question, but Jack knew his sister-in-law well enough to know she had an aim into this.

"DA's filing the warrants as we speak. We'll be able to bring in Bell before noon," Goldblume told them. "DA wants to bring in all the lesser defendants simultaneously."

"He can find a courtroom large enough?" Jack was only speaking half in jest. They had enough indictments to bring in a dozen other men on the totem pole.

"He's counting on the fact that Bell doesn't have enough attorneys to handle all of them at once."

"And the ones who get caught short are the ones that'll crack first," Sydney was new to working within the system, but she had enough insight to know that little fish got the big fish. "Any chance Williams be one of them?"

"I know you've got a soft spot for the kid, but this isn't our first dance with him," Goldblume told them. "He knows the score better than half the others. Unless he's willing to give us anything that we don't already know, he's looking at five to fifteen."

Sydney wasn't going to let this go. Jack didn't know why she had focused on this particular young felon - there were probably a lot better cases waiting in observation- but he knew better than to argue with her.

The lieutenant clearly could tell as much. "Look, I know what it's like to get worked up about these kids," he finally told him. "And I know that you feel like you know him. But you get invested in them, it'll eat you up from the inside out."

This was good advice, and she might have been able to take it, but right then, one of the other uniforms rapped on the door. After some minor apologizing about the interruption, he told them than they had Williams in interrogation, saying that he was demanding to talk with an attorney.

"The one who his boss has on retainer isn't good enough?" Goldblume raised an eyebrow at this.

The uniform shook his head. "Says that guy ain't gonna have his back. Says he's got someone a lot higher up on the food chain, but he ain't saying word one without a suit."

"Great. He's in custody ten minutes, and he's already testing our bullshit meters," the lieutenant said shaking his head. "Let him stew a little while before getting the PD involved."

Syd wasn't sure what caused the next impulse. "What if I were to pose as a public defender? Consider it one last freebie before cashing out."

Now Jack was a little puzzled. "There are other people here who are capable of doing this,' he reminded her.

"Just give me five minutes with him. You can observe, and you think I've gone to far you can pull me."

There were a lot of reasons that this was a bad idea. But Sydney had been on a long journey trailing this particular bad boy. Talking with Snot Boogie might make it easier to put all this behind her. "Lieutenant?" he asked.

"You save one of my people the trouble of tracking down this kid's crap; I'll recommend you for a bonus," Goldblume responded. "Just don't expect him to give you Jimmy Hoffa."

What none of them knew yet was that ever since the cops had swooped in, a small crowd had been gathering it that same section of Brooklyn. It had been so gradual that neither of the local units that had been called in for patrol had noticed it at first, or that all of the passerby seemed to be listening to the radio.

"How much longer until were ready?" a voice one on of those whispered to a man in the crowd.

"Less than ten minutes," he replied.

Chloe O'Brien had arrived in the calm before the storm.

**7:32:02/7:32:03/7:32:04/7:32:05**

**Interrogation Room**

Sydney had gone to a lot of trouble to make sure that no one in Bell's crew knew what she looked like. She then ducked into the ladies room to put on a coat and glasses that she kept on standby for meetings with higher ups. Nadia had been in there as well, reminding her of what she couldn't promise him. (Ironically, ever since they had gone into the private sector, they had to deal more with government issues far more than they had when they actually had been working for CTU.)

Nadia had then asked the question that was foremost on everyone's mind. "Can you do this without making this personal?"

"I don't even know this kid," Sydney reminded her. "This will be the first time we've been in the same room. Of course I could be impartial." This hadn't been the question, but Nadia let this go. Having spent the better part of a month listening to some of the dialogues Williams had engaged in, she figured all her sister would have to do is sit in a room with him for five minutes, and she'd be fully committed to locking him away.

"Mr. Williams, is it?" Sydney asked, never lifting her eyes from her notepad. "I'm Sydney Bristow with Legal Aid." She offered him her hand. Williams didn't take it. He just looked at her like she smelled bad.

"So you are being charged with trafficking in narcotics, illegal possession and discharge of a firearm, threatening a police officer," She took a practice sigh. "I get all the solid citizens."

Williams scoffed. There was no other word for it. "You're the best they could come up with?" he muttered.

"It's barely even seven-thirty. All of the rich lawyers are still snug in their beds. I'm the best you're going to get," Sydney peered at him, "unless you have better options."

"Nah, that's okay," Williams was smiling. She had to admit it wasn't attractive. "I ain't gonna need for you long."

Sydney was beginning to question Williams' sanity. "Son, from what I understand, the cops have you dead to rights on all these charges. Unless you are willing to give someone up."

"You must think I'm fucking crazy," Williams seemed far more comfortable her that she was. "Like I don't know you don't have the cops watching me right now."

"Do you know what kind of situation you're in right now?"

"Here, where I am, I'm safe. It's those motherfuckers who have to watch out."

She was beginning to wonder how she could have felt anything like sympathy for this kid, fourteen or not.

"Now here's what gonna happen. You are going to get the DA on the phone. Right now. And you're going to get me a Get Out of Jail Free card."

"You do understand the charges against you, right?" Sydney told him.

"Course I do. I been in lock up more often than my mama's house. Don't matter." Williams sounded like he was enjoying this. "When I tell them what I got, they'll let me walk right out the front door."

Something here just didn't compute. This kid was too sure of himself. "Look, if you're talking about giving up your boss-"

"Shit, my boss is probably dead right now." Williams said this so casually, it took Sydney a few seconds to understand what she had just heard. "How you like that, bitches?" Williams shouted into the looking glass. "All that work you po-lice put into chasing Marlowe, and he gets whacked before you can slap the cuffs on him!"

A very cold but familiar feeling was starting to pass through Sydney. The feeling that they had tapped into something that might me a hell of a lot darker than just some drug dealer.

"Now you go back in there, and you get me my deal, " Williams told her cheerfully. "And you might want to hurry, counselor. Cause a lot more people gonna die today, and if they don't hurry, they gonna be part of it."

"Why the fuck should the cops help a little pissant like you?" All pretense of her role had disappeared; Agent Bristow was back in the room. "You just threatened their lives. That's another charge right there."

"Cause in about ten minutes, bodies are going to start falling. Now I know the bulls don't care about gangstas killing gangstas, but every time a stray bullet hits a tourist, they about shit themselves," Williams looked right at the clock. "There about to be a whole shitload of them."

Sydney got to her feet, looking at Kenny Williams like he was some kind of poisonous insect. Before her body started working ahead of her mind, her cell rang. She let it ring twice before she picked it up. "Yes?"

"Syd, get out of there now." It was Vaughn, and he sounded worried. "I just got a call from Marshall. We've got another problem."

The detached feeling that had been surrounding Syd was enough to make her realize where she was. She hung up, and looked at Williams. "I'll get back to you in a bit." Then she got out before her hands could betray her by wrapping themselves around his neck.

**7:39:40/7:39:41/7:39:42**

The three of them were waiting in the aisles. Phones were ringing, and cops were walking a bit faster. "What the hell is happening?" Sydney demanded.

"Marshall called a minute ago. Before he could take the cameras offline, he had one last loose end to tie up at the drop site." Nadia told them. "He just read the text Williams got."

"What did it say?" Sydney asked.

Jack presented her with a Palm Pilot. BAIT SET. READY THE FIRECRACKER. "No idea what it means, but we can start making some good guesses."

"Disturbances have been breaking out all over Brooklyn, including where the bust went down. Incidents of gang violence in Flatbush, Crown Heights and Hell's Kitchen," Vaughn told them. "No one can give an explanation as to why or over what."

"How does any of this pertain to our bust?" she demanded.

"All of the violence is breaking out within proximity to known stash-houses," Jack replied.

"But the warrants probably haven't been filed yet," Vaughn reminded them. "This is far too organized to just be drug related."

Sydney really didn't want to say the next statement, but she figured it had to be said. "How exactly is this our problem? We don't work for law enforcement anymore. And as helpful as we were, the lieutenant probably wouldn't be happy if he knew that people he hired to resolve a situation are considering going rogue."

"We're already involved," Jack told her. "The only reason we got the text is because Chloe went back to the drop **site. Marshall got the **message; two minutes the whole place starts reliving its Golden Oldies."

"Are the cameras dead?"

Nadia shook her head. "Marshall and Edgar are rebooting, but as it is, we're blind down there. And she's not answering her cell."

"Fuck," Sydney muttered. "Where's Kim?"

"She's finishing up her debrief," Jack told her.

"Grab her out. Tell her meet out me front in two minutes. I'm going to call Marshall, get a fix on Chloe's last location."

Jack nodded, then walked over to Goldblume, who looked like he was in the middle of a war room already. "Lieutenant, I know you've got enough problems, but you need to call the New York CTU ASAP."

Goldblume knew their history but was still puzzled. "What makes you think this is anything other than what it looks like?"

"I don't. Call it intuition."

"From what I understand, your intuition can raise the national threat level. Are you sure this rates?"

"I don't," Jack hesitated. "But we're rarely this wrong."

**7:45:08/7:45:09/7:45:10/7:45:11**

**Despite the chaos spreading around her**, Chloe **had not begun**to truly panic until she had tried to call Edgar and had not been able to get any reception on her cell. Her phone, like all of the ones at Double B, had been improved by Marshall's tinkering - she was pretty sure that you could get reception on it during a blizzard in Antarctica. So there were only a few real possibilities as to why she wasn't able to reach anybody - none of them very pleasant, and all of them involving situations that she was definitely not prepared for.

The chaos had been unfolding since the minute she had arrived - the closest equivalent was Simi Valley after the verdict in the Rodney King trial. However, there were two major differences between that and what was happening. First, the violence there had been mainly racial. As far as Chloe could tell, the attackers didn't seem to much care what color their victims were. Secondly, half the people were causing the violence were also packing heat. As many bullets were flying as bricks and rocks. And even though not half an hour ago the place had been swarming with cops, the police presence in this part of Brooklyn was severely lacking. Her vehicle was set to handle just about anything, but not when the streets were crowded with people, all of whom seemed to suddenly to bear a grudge against her SUV

Chloe knew that Jack, Sydney and the rest had a 'leave no man behind' mentality. Edgar and Marshall had no doubt alerted them to her predicament, and the cavalry would no doubt soon be arriving. What was critical about the next few minutes was survival and making sure that they would be able to find her. And since her car had a GPS in it, all she had to was barricade herself inside and wait. That idea got shot to shit when, through all of the noise and violence, she could distinctly hear someone yelling for help.

_Wait for the people who are qualified to do this get here,_ she told herself. That resolve lasted until she saw the likely victim- a man around Sydney's age, kneeling by a prone woman with a large pool of blood already gathered around her side.

_I can't believe I'm about to do this, _she thought to herself_The health plan better cover it._

She left the safety of her car, hoping like hell the gun didn't slip out of her hands, and started running towards the injured parties. The violence didn't mass around her as she ran towards them, but it sure as hell didn't ease up- Chloe had to dodge three rocks and at least four bullets before she had gone fifty feet. Unfortunately, several other realities set in by then, not the least of which she was going to have to rely on help from the person she was trying to save.

"Hey, um, you!" she shouted. _How did Jack and Syd do this without sounding as futile as she did? _"Can you carry her?"

"You a cop?"

"Sort of," she shouted. "If she's to have any chance of living, we have to move her now!" Even as Chloe shouted this, she could tell this would be a problem- the woman had a gaping wound in her stomach.

"Can you get her to a hospital?!" The man sounded calm, but she could tell there was a thin edge of panic in his voice.

"Not in my car!" she admitted. "But I have friends coming to get me. They'll be able to get us to safety, but we have to move now!"

Chloe could tell this didn't seem to fill the man with confidence, but he clearly realized his options were low, because a few seconds later, he whispered something in the woman's ear, and picked her up.

He moved as quickly as he could, but he could've been Carl Lewis, for all the good it was doing the woman- the patch of blood beneath her shirt quickly took up the bottom half, and she could see the blood spewing as he ran. Chloe did her best to cover him, but she imagined it was like combating a swarm of locusts with a flyswatter.

When he got to the car, she hauled the door open, and pushed the woman in the back seat. "There's a medical kit in the driver-side compartment," Chloe said. "Get all the gauze and morphine you can find."

The young man- blondish brown hair, and a lot closer to her age than was clear from far away- began to remove the bandages with more alacrity and skill then she would have expected. "I'll do the best I can," she told him, "but I'm even less of a medic than I am a cop."

"What exactly do you do?" the man asked.

"Ill tell you when we get out of this," Chloe assured him, hoping that she had said used the right modifier.

**7:53:07/7:53:08/7:53:09**

From the moment they had driven out of the police zone, Sydney and Kim had descended into a world of chaos. They had only gone into the station half an hour ago; how could things have broken down that fast?

Sydney was going as fast as she could, but the closer they got to the GPS on Chloe's vehicle, the more society seemed to be disintegrating. People were in the streets, packing heat and causing trouble in inverse proportion to how far they were from the station. And they knew enough about gang colors to know that this was more then just some kind of riot, and that they weren't going to go unchallenged by the police for long. When that happened, things would go bad fast. They'd spent enough time among the Bell crew to know how much firepower a gang can carry when they are determined to take over some corners. Wars had been won with less firepower, and they were pretty sure one was about to be fought.

"What the hell started this?" Sydney muttered.

"It sure as hell wasn't what we did," Kim had been listening to the police scanner. "When they went to arrest Bell, the son of a bitch had already been taken out."

"Execution style?"

Kim shook her head. "Five shots to the chest and groin, all delivered at close range. Someone wanted to send a message, but not to us."

"Whoever did this is trying to send a message to everybody," Sydney told her. "Who that somebody is-"

She stopped short. The GPS told them Chloe's vehicle was right in front of her, but she could've told that without looking. Her car was fifty feet away, but it looked like half a dozen people were trying to overturn it.

"How do you want to handle this?" Kim asked, as she opened the back seat.

"Non-lethal weapons. Until we know more of what the hell's going on, we don't add to the body count," Sydney replied, reaching for a tear gas grenade. Kim reached for a couple, and began loading the shotgun with rubber bullets.

When they got out of the car, the people remained intent on overturning it. Before they were completely there, however, a guy in a red baseball cap whirled around. "Hey Kim and Khloe, this the wrong neighborhood for you, sweetie."

Sydney had no intention of letting them get any closer. She pulled the pin, and rolled the grenade at them. The three closest to the car remained intent on what they were doing, leaving them completely at the mercy of the gas.

One of the rioters who remained standing had the good wisdom to run away. The remaining two- the wiseass in the cap among them- started charging them. "Why do they never go quietly?" Sydney said to herself.

The guy in the cap took out a crowbar, so Kim unloaded a slug in his chest. He fell to the ground "Next time, we do the real thing. Don't fucking doubt me."

The one still standing finally seemed to get the message. But Sydney had no intention of letting a source just disappear. She grabbed him by the collar. "What the hell started this?" she demanded.

"You the cops?" the man demanded.

"A concerned citizen. Answer the fucking question."

The bastard started smiling. "You actually think you can stop this?" he told her. "This is just a little dust-up. Real rumble comes later."

"What the fuck are you-" And then Sydney heard something she shouldn't on a Brooklyn street corner. She hit the dirt. A split second later, the world exploded.

It took a few seconds for the ringing in her ears to dissipate. By then Kim, who had had the same reactions Sydney did, was already upright, asking after her well-being.

"Thought I was through dodging those," she muttered. "Our friend is dead."

"Dust in the wind." Kim nodded.

They both looked up to see Chloe's head sticking out of the car, looking shocked for her. "I thought you were kidding when you said this shit followed you around!"

They let this slide. "Not that were not glad to see you," Kim started.

"I need your help. They shot a woman. I'm pretty sure she dying."

The three women ran to the car, which, amazingly, was still intact. "Sir, can I check on your..." And then Sydney got a look at the man. "Will?"

Will Tippen looked up, but didn't let go of the other woman's hand. "Syd?"

**7:59:57/7:59:58/7:59:59/8:00:00**


	2. 8:00 AM-9:00 AM

**CHAPTER 2**

**THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN 8:00 A.M. AND 9:00 A.M.**

For a couple of seconds Sydney was clearly thrown. She didn't know why seeing the man who had been one of her best friends once should be more paralyzing than seeing her mother was alive after nearly thirty years or watching a man's face shift into the features of another, but for some reason, it was. Had she even spared a thought about Will for the last five years? And now, he had turned up in the middle of a war zone.

Kim, not having any knowledge of the man, was able to react faster. She saw what was happening, and moved in to try and find the woman's pulse, then her heartbeat.

"Is she dead?" Will spoke with a kind of detachment that Syd had never associated with him. Was this a consequence of being around her? Were she and her friends just an abyss of darkness?

She shook this off. Will's being here was a coincidence, a horrible one, but a coincidence just the same. And she wouldn't be able to help her friend if she was gathering wool.

All of this took place in the space of a minute.

"Yes," Kim admitted. "I'm so sorry, but there's nothing we can do for her."

Will nodded. "Could you give me a moment alone?"

They probably weren't going to have enough time for this, but everybody else knew sometimes you had to make it. Fortunately, the madness seemed to have abated a bit.

Chloe then asked the question they were all considering. "What the hell is happening?"

"It isn't just happening here," Kim replied. "And it seems to involve at least four different gangs."

"Any of them relating to Bell?"

"We just picked up half of them. Someone killed Bell before this whole mess got started." Sydney told them.

"So who's pulling the strings?" Chloe demanded.

Syd took out her cell. "Someone knew this was going down before we did, and we still have him in custody. Maybe your father will be able to make him more... cooperative."

PRECINCT SQUADROOM

**8:03:02/8:03:03/8:03:04**

As it turned out, Jack had been considering the exact same scenarios. Normally, he would've been willing to subject a suspect to one of his patented interrogations. However, he was dealing with two issues.

First, Kenny Williams was only fourteen, and as heartless as the government seemed to consider him, there were some lines he had trouble crossing. Torturing a minor was one such thing, even one as repellent as Williams was.

Given the gravity of the situation, he would have been able to get past it were it not for the second and more important factor: he was in a New York Police station, not CTU. There would be lawyers on the street, reporters, each one of them making Jack into the bad guy for torturing a "poor innocent little boy." Forget that the "innocent little boy" already had a violent criminal rap sheet, several inches and a few dozen pounds on Jack, and was obviously a part of what seemed to be the biggest urban rampage since the Bronx was burning.

None of this would have stopped Jack, but it would certainly stop every single cop in that station, and they, in turn, would definitely be interested in stopping Jack from causing that scenario. Even if every cop wanted to sell tickets to Jack making Kenny talk, the cops would be obligated to stop him. And if Jack started making Kenny sing, would he have enough time to get the information out of him? Maybe. But, again, this wasn't CTU. If he laid a hand on Kenny, the DA would be obligated to throw Jack in a jail cell.

So, much as witnessing Sydney's little _tete a tete_ with Williams had turned his stomach, he had gone to Goldblume and told him to call the ADA and get Williams an immunity agreement. The lieutenant had argued, but half-heartedly - he knew Williams was small potatoes, and there was a much bigger threat on the line.

Normally, this kind of bureaucratic maneuvering would have taken a few hours to get done. Today it took less than fifteen minutes. The ADA had one caveat. "This kid goddamn better have something that we can confirm right away," he told them. "I'm not giving this kind of pass to someone who got lucky knowing what happened to his boss."

Knowing how high the stakes were, Goldblume said he was going to speak to the kid himself, which is where the situation was when Syd called.

"I gotta tell you," she told Jack. "I have my own questions. Starting with why a relatively low ranked slinger knew how bad the situation on the street was before we did."

"Or why in two weeks of surveillance we turned up nothing to suggest this kind of plan was in the works," Jack added. "A drug bust in Brooklyn doesn't lead to three separate gang wars."

"And some pretty heavy artillery for it." Jack was not at all happy to learn that his daughter and sister-in-law had just missed being taken out by a rocket-propelled grenade. "Something big is going on, and we seem to have missed the forest for the trees."

"We're not with CTU anymore," Nadia reminded her husband. "When we hear hoofs, it usually is a horse."

Just then, Goldblume rapped on the mirror to the interrogation room. "Whatever this is, I think we're going to find out what he knows," Jack told them.

"Put it on speaker. I want to hear this too." Marshall's phones really were works of art, Jack thought as he adjusted it.

"Tell ADA Cutter what you just told me," Goldblume was saying.

"It's like this. Last couple of weeks, Freddie Mack's been buying our packages from a new supplier." They'd heard something like this on the wire. This was going to be the first question they asked Mack when they hauled him in. "Said that he wanted to adjust our clientele. Marlowe was having problems with this. Said he wanted a sit-down. Guy said he didn't meet with the scum of the earth."

"Apart from demonstrating enormously good judgment, what does this have to do with all the violence?" Cutter demanded.

"Couple days ago, Mack starts getting feels from the Latinos and the Sicilians, guys he wouldn't piss on if they were on fire," Williams was still as cocky as ever. "Said they'd been getting messages from some brother telling them that there were going to be some changes made, and if they didn't like it, they could fuck off."

Jack frowned. While going through the wires of the last few days, they had noticed that some of the lower-level thugs had been getting calls from cells that connected to numbers that didn't exist. Because it hadn't had anything pertinent to the bust, he had told Chloe and Edgar to file it away, and they'd go through it after the arrest had been made. Which would be now.

He was about to ask Chloe if she could send him the relevant files, when he realized that Williams was still talking.

"Guy said that all of us were nothing more than cockroaches," he was telling Goldblume, "and that the exterminator was coming. But that there would be a place for some of us, and people would make triple the money for half the work."

"And you just bought into his sales talk." Cutter was buying this.

"The brother said he wasn't scared of anything they could do to him. Said he'd already been killed when he was in the joint. Nothing else they could do to him, and that when the time came he'd show them what death was like."

"And now we have to call our friends in the FBI," Nadia told them doubtfully.

"You don't have a name for this guy by any chance?" Goldblume asked, clearly thinking this was all bullshit.

"Brother Jamal," Williams answered. "Said that those sat as his right hand would be well rewarded."

"You didn't need a last name to decide to betray the man you'd been running dope for the last three years," Cutter seemed just as convinced as Goldblume. "He just says that he rose from the dead, that he'll improve your bottom line, and you buy into it."

"Marlowe's dead, ain't he?" Williams replied, as if this were enough.

"Do you have any proof of this fairy tale?"

Williams shrugged. "Two days ago, this runner named White Mike who said he worked for Jamal told me if I was interested in getting down with this to go to a PO Box in Bensonhurst at midnight last night. I get there, there's a phone and a gun. I pick it up, just get a busy signal. 'Bout fifteen minutes later, it rings. When I answer, voice on the other end tells me to fire that gun when I get a text. Says to wait for a call, and that the phone won't work until then."

"And when is this magic phone going to ring?" Cutter asked.

"'Bout fifteen minutes."

Goldblume and Cutter looked at the young felon like he was certifiable. The people watched from the interrogation room felt otherwise.

"They must have taken it from when they brought it into the station," Vaughn told them. "I'll get it, get in touch with Edgar and Marshall."

Jack and Nadia both nodded at this. "Syd, you get all that?" Jack asked.

"Jack, there's a long line from Williams getting a text message to gang wars breaking out in four different parts of the city," Sydney reminded him.

"I know it's a longshot, and that Williams' story is full of holes," Jack admitted, "but what we just heard doesn't sound like any drug kingpin we've dealt with."

"Assuming you're right, what do you want me and Sydney to do?" Kim asked.

Jack thought for a second. "Will, your friend, get him to the nearest care center. By the time you've got that handled, we should be ready to backtrace that call. The three of you are going to be our eyes and ears on the ground."

"Got it. Call you when it's done."

Sydney hung up, and walked back over to Will, who didn't seem to have moved since Kim had told him his girlfriend was dead. "Will, we should probably get out of here."

"What's this about, Syd?" Will asked instead.

"Will, we need to get your girlfriend-"

"Fiancée," Will mentioned, in an oddly detached tone. "Sharon and I were going to get married later this week."

This was not the thing she needed to hear, and frankly all she wanted to do was get one of her dearest friends out of the line of fire. Still, considering that Will had been there for her in the exact same situation nearly a decade ago, she decided to give him a little latitude. "This isn't safe for you, Will."

Will looked at her. "There never is, Syd. But I don't want to be left in the dark. I spent too much of my life like that."

This may have been true, but her resolve didn't shift. "Will, this was just an accident of circumstance. Nothing more."

"There are no accidents. You and I both know that. So at least be honest to tell me what the hell's going on."

Syd looked at her friend, who had gotten up this morning with no idea that he was going to have to bury the woman he loved today. So she made a bad judgment, and listened to her heart instead of her head.

"Get her in our car. I'll explain on the drive over."

**8:16:22/8:16:23/8:16:24/8:16:25**

The moment Vaughn saw the phone, he knew they had just gotten confirmation that there was more going on than a drug war. The cell was a variation on a model they'd seen a couple of times in CTU. It didn't respond when you pressed the keys or when you tried to call a different line, and would be next to impossible a run a trace on it. Pablo Escobar would not be able to get a phone like this, much less a fly-by-night drug dealer.

After Jack told Cutter to give Williams immunity, he had called Marshall and asked him point blank if he'd ever created a phone like the model they had, meaning 'for Sloane.' Marshall told them he had not, but he had worked on a couple of models like it before, and that there was no way to initiate a backtrace in the time they had, even if he was on site.

"I'm not the only one who thinks that letting this kid get this call is a bad idea, right?" Nadia asked. "This whole thing smells like a Trojan Horse."

"It probably is," Jack admitted. "But the cops have talking to all the other dealers we picked up. None of them know anything about this Brother Jamal or any other sit down. Edgar's going through the backlog of call, but he says even the most efficient search is going to take at least thirty minutes. This is the best lead we have."

Just then, Lt. Goldblume reentered the office, looking genuinely worried. He told them that the rioting was starting to escalate in the immediate area. He'd had to dispatch three units already, and half of his people were still on the street locking up the remnants of Bell's crew. He'd already called for assistance from other precincts, only to find that the gang warfare had stretched the resources of the city so thin.

"I gotta ask you, Jack, how much shit are we in?"

"I'm not going to lie to you," Jack told him. "This may just be the beginning."

And at that moment, Jack's cell rang again. This was the call he had not been looking forward to. "Hello, Bill."

"Jack, what the hell have you got the city into?" Bill Buchanan demanded.

"You've got my old job, you tell me," Jack replied.

He knew he wasn't being fair. Before Jack had gotten axed, Buchanan had been one of their oldest allies in the company. Considering that he was in the Division track, he was both incredibly capable and amicable to the majority of what CTU agents could pursue. The fact that his promotion had come because of the mass exodus over a year ago didn't change that. Most of the people in CTU wouldn't have bothered calling him at all with the news that he was about to be overridden.

"You wouldn't want your job now," Buchanan told him. "We've got three other agencies snapping that they should be taking the lead on this particular problem. So, please try to explain why you wanted this dropped in CTU's lap?"

"It's nothing personal, but this doesn't smell like a gang war," Jack then relayed what they had found over the last hour.

"A gangbanger's confession and a bulletproof cell doesn't add up to a terrorist action," Buchanan reminded him. "But you didn't call for that yet."

"You have to have been monitoring the situation before we called," Jack pointed out. "We need the government to get out of the circle jerk it seems to be in, and do something before the city combusts."

"I don't have to remind you the situation with CTU's manpower."

"Bill, I think we're about two more shootouts away from reenacting _Assault on Precinct 13._ If New York starts going up in smoke, they will find a way to blame you."

There really wasn't any way to answer, so Buchanan agreed he would dispatch three units to their location, and start coordinating with local law enforcement. "Can you hold out another ten minutes?"

Jack thought of saying "Ask me in ten minutes." Then he realized he was going to be dealing with a much bigger problem by then.

**8:22:47/8:22:48/8:22:49**

As it turned out explaining what was going on right now took far less time than Kim had thought it would. Will seemed to be assuming that they were will still working with the government, and this was part of some much larger plan. Sydney no doubt thought that she was just giving Will something else to concentrate on while they got to where they needed to be.

That in itself was a much smaller problem than they had thought that it would be. Apparently, breaking up one group of rioters combined with an explosion was enough to clear the area. Kim had no doubt they had probably moved the carnage to the next neighborhood over, but that was a problem would deal with when they had adequate backup.

The urgent care center, not surprisingly, was overwhelmingly crowded, and the day when their names could clear a room had passed. So Sydney took Will up to the front desk, and explained in a succinct matter that Will's fiancée was dead, and they needed a place where he could wait with the body. The doctor on staff was understanding, and managed to get someone to take care of Will.

Sydney was trying to figure out to way adequately say goodbye to her friend when he seemed to beat her to it with a non sequitur. "When were you planning on telling me you didn't work with the government anymore?" Will asked.

She was only momentarily nonplussed "I don't see how that matters," she responded.

"I was in witness protection for four years, not on another planet; I'm fully aware why and how you left," Will replied. "What I can't understand is why you're still dealing with something that isn't in your paygrade any longer."

"This is at least partially our mess," she said slowly. "We didn't cause it, but it's happening in our backyard."

"Is that why you still don't ask for help even when it's right in front of you?" Sydney clearly didn't follow this, so Will followed up. "Remember that consulting job the FBI had me up for last time we met?"

"You still work with the Bureau?" At some other point, Sydney might have considering using this, but she had no intentions of making lemonade with these particularly bitter lemons.

"Have been for the last three years. They moved me out of Witness Protection after Sloane was killed. I thought I could get back to a normal life." A grimace passed over Will's face. "As normal as any of us are allowed to get, anyway."

"Will, I'm glad to hear all this, but your fiance just got killed. You shouldn't have to do anything like -

"-Like the way you did when Sloane had Danny killed?" Will seemed way too rational for someone who had to be going through a world of hurt.

By now, Kim had reentered the room. "Look, I don't mean interrupt, but the situation isn't going to get any easier with us just staying here."

"Yeah, we should go," Will told them.

"Will, you're in no condition to be doing anything," Sydney tried to argue one last time.

"The woman I love is dead. Much as I'd like to change that, she's gone. But I can't ignore the fact that the world is imploding around me." Will told her. "Now, if you're really serious about stopping the same kind of monsters who murdered Shannon, I can help you. Frankly, I have to."

_Why do my friends keep wanting to put themselves in harm's__ way?_Sydney thought. But she knew Will, and how hard it was to get him to let go of something, even if it was for his own good. However, she swore to herself that she would make sure that nothing else happened to him today.

"How?" she asked.

**15th Precinct**

Jack had not been able to convince Goldblume to completely empty out the squad room, mainly because there were still too many felons, and they were starting to run out of police. "Besides," as he put it, "there are a lot easier ways to ice a drug dealer."

Mainly to humor them, he reduced the number of people in the station by half, and put the group of them in a smaller room out of the line of traffic.

Vaughn still thought they'd be better off waiting for Buchanan's people to come in, which would make tracking the call a lot quicker, and definitely could come up with a more secure location. Jack would've been willing to do that given another five minutes, which they just didn't have.

Williams seemed to find all this maneuvering hysterical, especially considering that it might end up with him a body bag. Vaughn was beginning to wonder, Sydney's concerns about him notwithstanding, if it was worth all this trouble just to keep this kid alive.

"Man, this dude's probably out there getting bail money for me," Williams told him. Jack decided against telling him that Jamal probably wasn't go to waste a dime on saving his life.

Just then, the phone rang. "Just remember to stick to the story," Jack told Williams.

"What, you think I'm stupid?"

_No, just expendable._

Williams picked up. "Yo, it's Kenny."

"I honestly didn't think you'd pick up," the voice on the other end said.

"It's like your boy said earlier, cops are too busy dealing with the mess outside to deal with the rank and file." Williams told him.

"You must think I'm a complete fool, Kenny," The speaker's voice grew ice cold. "My people saw you got picked up an hour ago."

"Kenny, put the phone down _now," _Jack ordered.

Vaughn didn't know whether it was Jack's mood or the speaker that got to Williams, but whatever it was, he dropped the phone fast.

"You're a problem, now, Kenny, and I have of dealing with problems."

_"DOWN!" _Jack shouted.

All three of them hit the dirt, Jack slamming Williams to the floor. Five seconds later, the phone exploded.

**8:31:16/8:31:17/8:31:18/8:31:19**

Considering that they'd been expecting something like this for the last ten minutes, the explosion was something of a disappointment**.** There wasn't a lot of damage done or even much of a blast- the walls were barely singed. Then again, how much explosive can you fit in a cell phone? Or maybe Brother Jamal didn't think it was worth wasting so much firepower on some so low down the food chain.

Whatever the reason, the three people who were used to things like this happening got to their feet without even getting their clothes that mussed or their ears ringing. The people who were more concerned about it were the cops in the precinct, who now realized that they were being assailed from within as well as without.

"You willing to accept we're on to something?" Jack told Goldblume the second both of them could hear without a loud ringing in his ears.

"Then explain to me how Williams getting iced has anything to do with the chaos breaking out across the city," Goldblume asked.

The lieutenant had just asked a question Jack couldn't answer, but right then his phone started ringing. Marshall's technology seemed capable of surviving just about anything short of a nuclear blast. Though that was a theory Jack _didn't _want to test.

"Please tell me that my husband and my sister are still alive," Sydney asked tensely. After Jack assured her that they were, she laid into him. "What the hell were you thinking?"

"I was trying to follow a lead-"

"And you decided to make sure that everybody who was capable of handling this situation was all in the same place when you did it? That's the kind of logic I thought we'd gotten away from when I resigned."

Jack acknowledged that this probably hadn't been his best call, but that he had done the best he could with the intel and situation. "No one died," he reminded her.

"Yeah, I think we need a better criteria for success than that," Sydney reminded him. "Kim's not exactly thrilled about this, either."

Jack supposed he deserved that, too. "Have you handled the situation with Will?"

Now Sydney turned a bit reserved. "About that. Will's offered to give us a hand in this investigation." She then explained that Will was now an FBI liaison agent, that he had been transferred their less than a month ago, and that he had a certain amount of pull with the domestic terrorist network.

Jack knew that he shouldn't throw stones at this particular glass house, but knew he needed to make this clear. "You really think he's in the best position to be helping us right now?"

"He says that he needs a distraction," Sydney admitted. "And that he doesn't want to mourn his wife while the city burns around him. Given everything he and I have been through, I'm not sure how to argue with that."

Will Tippin had always been part of their pre-CTU life that Jack, even now, didn't ask much about. From the most cold-blooded standpoint, it would be useful to have another asset working with them. Still, there was something about the situation that smacked of trouble. Jack might've argued about it some more, but then Nadia came walking up to him, and told them that CTU was finally on the scene.

"What's our next move?"

"Tell Chloe to start running a filter through the recordings we hadn't yet had a chance to go through. Anything related to a Brother Jamal or any kind of operation that might be coming off today. Check if there's anyone in Marlowe Bell's gang that we haven't yet arrested who might be part of this." Jack paused. "Ask Will if he can speed up the process of accessing the Bureau database. Maybe there's someone there who can help us narrow it down."

"You don't want us to come in?" Sydney asked.

Jack looked outside one of the windows. In the early morning sky, he could see smoke coming over the horizon. The carnage that had infested their streets was getting closer.

"I think right now, the safest thing for you to do is to make any location you're at secure as possible." Jack told her. "This is going to get ugly fast, and we're going to need to have people out there, who know what they're doing."

**EASTSIDE URGENT CARE**

**8:37:29/8:37:30/8:37:31**

"We'll update you as soon as we brief CTU. "

"Got it," Sydney hung up and walked over to Chloe, who was already online with Edgar. "How long will it take you get the data we need?"

"Five minutes, maybe a little less with these pass codes that your friend gave us," Chloe looked at Will. "Jack okay having him around?"

"He'll live with it." By now, Kim was back over to her.

"Technically speaking, it's not safe for him to be here," she told Syd.

"Technically speaking, neither are we," Sydney countered. "You have the hope chest?"

The 'hope chest' was the euphemism that all Double B employees called the weapons locker that was on all of their vehicles. They contained enough weapons, ammo, and selected riot gear to furnish a small troupe. Two of them put together would probably be enough firepower to stave off a small invasion. Sydney hoped that she wasn't going to have to prove that they could.

They took out the keys they carried, twisted them in the locks and entered a three digit ID code. There was no other way to access them. When Will saw the munitions they were carrying, he had to blink several times. "Guys, we're in Harlem, not Chechnya." he reminded him.

"Russian soldiers are more easily identifiable than the enemies that we might end up fighting," Sydney pointed out.

When Will reached for a weapon, Kim fixed him with a look. "We appreciate your help, Will, but we're not going to arm civilians," she told him.

"You gave one to Miss O'Brien," Will reminded her.

"Yeah, and you saw how well that worked out," Kim countered. "You may work with the FBI, but even I know that you spend your day behind a desk."

Will looked a little hurt at this. "Syd, if I could handle Allison Dorian, I can certainly handle a few gang-bangers."

Syd knew that Will could handle a weapon, and that they needed people they could trust, but she wasn't entirely sold on Will being able to help that much, given his emotional state. She also knew that making this argument with him would hold next to zero weight with him.

They were then interrupted by Chloe. "Think I've got something!" Apparently while going through the backlog of calls they had, they had come with a name that might have a link to what they were looking for.

It was a ninety second conservation between Freddie Mackenna, chief supplier and a lower-level enforcer named Elijah Kaye, a member of a rival crew. Kaye fell outside the scope of the investigation, and the conversation they were having was mostly a back and forth about re-ups. But in the last thirty seconds of the conversation, Mackenna mentioned "that thing we talked about." Kaye said that he had checked it with his guy in Em City, and that he was good. "Call me with the time and place."

"I've no idea what he means by Em City, but I back-traced the origin of the call," Chloe told them. " A payphone just outside of Washington Heights, enemy territory for both of them."

Marveling that they had found a working payphone anywhere in New York, Sydney wondered why either one would risk a public call in a section of town where neither one knew where they'd be safe.

"Why don't we have my father ask him?" Kim replied. "Last I checked, Freddie Mac was the first one we picked up."

By the time Jack and Vaughn had finished briefing Buchanan's team (one tech, four heavily armed field agents and a supervisory agent named Lee Castle, who Kim had worked with in LA), you would have had to have been blind or worked at Division to not see how desperate the situation was getting. The rioting and shooting had been spreading in a concentrated pattern, and while some of the groups had been put down, the one they were dealing with seemed to be, if anything, gathering steam. And it was clearly heading due east, right for the precinct squad.

"I've already had calls from the President's chief of staff," Buchanan told Jack. "She wants to know if he should begin mobilizing the National Guard."

"I don't think we're there yet," Jack admitted, "but it may just be a matter of hours."

Nadia walked out, and told the others what Chloe had just uncovered. "I checked the logs; Mackenna's still in lockup."

Jack looked at Castle. "Whatever you're planning on doing, you better do it fast," Castle told them. "We'll be ready to stand siege here, but if what you say is true, some of Mackenna's people are going to be en route. And he's got to know that."

Nadia nodded, and turned back to her husband. "Who do you want to handle it?"

Jack had already considered this. Freddie Mackenna had spent his entire life in one bad-ass confrontation after the other. The only way to get to him was use whatever surprise they could, which meant it had come from the person he would expect the least threat.

**8:45:59/8:46:00/8:46:01/8:46:02**

This interrogation room was quite a bit smaller then the one where Sydney had impersonated a public defender, and the walls were the color most commonly associated with urine. There was a camera on the far wall; Nadia and Jack had been assured it was turned off. Goldblume was uneasy with this, even after he had been assured by CTU that what they were looking for would not come back to bite them in court. No one was thinking further ahead then the next ten minutes. Mackenna had been handcuffed to the chair in the far corner of the room.

Nadia walked in the room. Like everyone else associated with Double B, Freddie Mac didn't know her from Eve. So his reaction was probably about the same he'd give any woman who walked in the room. "Hey bitch, where's my lawyer?"

Freddie Mackenna was not an imposing figure even by the standards of drug dealers. He topped out at five-eight, and most of his hundred sixty pounds tended towards fat rather than muscle. He nevertheless probably thought that Nadia amounted to nothing more than a twig. She was going to change that mindset quickly.

"Attorney can't get you of the mess you're in," Nadia told him. "You're assuming way too much."

"You gonna scare me with some weak-ass threat?" Freddie didn't seem to realize the trouble he was in. "You know my record. I can jail."

"Oh, Freddie, you have so much more to worry about than prison. I'd be more concerned about you're getting out of this room." You wouldn't think a sentence like that could've been delivered pleasantly, but Nadia made it sound like butter wouldn't melt in her mouth.

Mackenna snorted, then began to laugh outright. "Shit! Now they're making runway models into cops?"

"I'm not a cop, Freddie. You'd probably be safer if I was a cop. But I did once do this for a living. And I learned something very useful at my old job."

Mackenna never knew what hit him. Nadia hit him twice in the gut so fast that his mind didn't realize what had happened until his body did. He was doubled over and moaning.

"Very useful, learning how to hit someone without leaving a mark. But that's probably too subtle for you gangsters."

She then reached down and kneed him in the testicles. Hard enough for his howl of pain to go up an octave. Unfortunately, his mouth worked ahead of his mind.

"You crazy bitch, aggh!"

This time she hit him in the small of the back.

"Who is Brother Jamal?" she demanded.

"What the fuck-"

Nadia then took out a very small knife, grabbed Mackenna's sleeve, and yanked him up. "You're going to start telling me all you know about Brother Jamal. Names, dates, people he runs with. Otherwise, I'm going to start taking your balls out from under you. See how long you last on cell block nine without those."

She then began to lower the knife. She had just reached the crotch of his pants, when he finally started jabbering. "I never met the guy! He just started making contact with me a month ago through a guy I knew in the joint! Says he's been working the projects for months!"

"Doing what?' Nadia's grip didn't even loosen.

"Some Black Panther bullshit, about taking the streets back from the cops, stopping us from warring among ourselves and focusing the rage on the ones who deserve it!"

"How do we find him?"

Mackenna actually looked at her if she were crazy. "Look around! Bastard's gonna be on your fucking doorstep in a few minutes."

This was almost certainly a line. The days of gangster leaders fighting on the ground had gone out with Che Guevara. Brother Jamal, whoever he was, would be watching from a distance. "You'd better be telling the truth."

"Or what? I saw how they got to Snot Boogie," There was more fear in McKenna's voice then when she'd had a knife to his balls. "Right under your damn noses. I'm a dead man either way."

Nadia decided not to tell Freddie Mackenna that Williams was unconscious but alive, because the fundamental point was still true. This guy had a hell of a reach, and he wouldn't have to try that hard to get them soon.

**8:52:15/8:52:16/8:52:17**

Chloe had spent the last ten minutes going through the backlog of calls, and was now performing one of those tricks that only Marshall's software could have provided. Using the cell network that they had been tracking ever since that had been chasing Bell, Marshall could use a reverse GPS to figure out where the caller had been at each call. He had not bothered to report this particular item to the NYPD because, frankly, this was a detail that wasn't pertinent to any part of the investigation. Until now.

"Five members of the Bell crew took calls that originate from areas within Washington Heights." Chloe told them. "All of them seem to come from accounts that were terminated some time in the last three days."

That did seem to indicate that they were prepping for something. "Anything in Marshall's software that can narrow down our location a little more?" Sydney asked.

"Working on it, but, um," Chloe paused deliberately "don't we have to deal more pressing matters?"

It was a pretty pertinent question. During the twenty minutes since they'd arrived, the noise on the streets had been getting noticeably louder, and the smoke and shooting had become more prominent. Up until now, no one seemed intent on raiding the Center, but none of them thought they would stay that lucky.

Kim had just gone into waiting room, which was another problem. There were at least thirty people, half of whom hadn't been there in the last fifteen minutes. The gangsters didn't seem to care that much who got hit; she had scene at least five people wearing gang colors, and who appeared to be packing serious heat. Kim had gotten well-versed in gang relations to know that this med care center was probably about one shouting match away from becoming a shooting gallery itself.

"There any chance we'll be seeing help from anybody on the right side of the law?" she asked Syd.

Reluctantly, Syd told her no. Never mind getting help from the fifteenth precinct; the police scanner had revealed that forces throughout the city had been dispatched to cover the major flashpoints. CTU decision to take command aside, a good part of the alphabet soup was trying to figure out which portions of the city were the biggest. Normally, knowing that they would not be apart of the giant clusterfuck that this was shaping up to be would have raised both of their spirits. However, given their situation, this wasn't cheerful news.

"Most cheerful estimate is maybe forty minutes to an hour," Sydney told them. "Do you think we can hold out that long?"

And at that point, the shouting in the waiting room, which the former government agents had managed to regard as white noise up until now.

"I think we're about to find out where we get it from first," Kim told her.

Telling Chloe to stay put no matter what she heard (she was armed but, as she had proved just an hour earlier, pressed she couldn't hit the broadside of a barn) Sydney and Kim took out their weapons and proceeded to the front.

Two black gangstas dressed in loud colors were in the middle of a shouting match with a young Latino. They had progressed from random insults to a cacophony of abuse, and the boiling point had just been reached, as all three of them had .9mm's out.

Somehow, Sydney didn't think reasoning with these people was going to work. She fired her weapon in the air. Half of the people in the waiting room hit the dirt. This did get all of the participants attention, but not in a good way. They all turned their weapons from each other to her.

"Bitch, this ain't any of your goddamn business!" the would be gangsta told her.

"Drop your weapon or I spread your brains on the wall," Sydney replied

"Don't you know, we ain't taking shit from cops no more," one of them told her.

"Then I guess it's a good thing we're not cops," Kim told them.

"Hey, bitch," the Latino shouted. "Can't you count?"

_Nothing better to bring gang scum together than the threat of a cop, _Sydney thought. _Martin Luther King was so wrong._

Kim took it a different way, and fired a perfect shot into one of the shooters wrists. "Insult me again. I fucking dare you," she snapped as he dropped the gun.

Unfortunately, they had been so focused on the shooter, they had forgotten about the other people in the waiting room. The other would be gangstas grabbed one of the patients, and put the gun at her head. "You willing to play with the big boys, little girl?" he snarled. "Both of you girls, put your guns on the ground _now."_

Vaughn had heard how bad the situation was at the urgent care center, and was about to head out into the firestorm, when the decision was taken out of his hands.

A bullet hole appeared in the squadroom wall. The rioters had officially arrived.

**8:59:57/8:59:58/8:59:59/9:00:00**


End file.
